Article III, Section 2, Clause 1:
The Judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States; between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States,—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
Cases arising under the Constitution are cases that require an interpretation of the Constitution for their correct decision.1 They arise when a litigant claims an actual or threatened invasion of his constitutional rights by the enforcement of some act of public authority, usually an act of Congress or of a state legislature, and asks for judicial relief. The clause furnishes the principal textual basis for the implied power of judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation and other official acts.
Development of Federal Question Jurisdiction
Almost from the beginning, the Convention demonstrated an intent to create federal question
jurisdiction in the federal courts with regard to federal laws;2 such cases involving the Constitution and treaties were added fairly late in the Convention as floor amendments.3 But when Congress enacted the Judiciary Act of 1789, it did not confer general federal question jurisdiction on the inferior federal courts, but left litigants to remedies in state courts with appeals to the United States Supreme Court if judgment went against federal constitutional claims.4 Although there were a few jurisdictional provisions enacted in the early years,5 it was not until the period following the Civil War that Congress, in order to protect newly created federal civil rights and in the flush of nationalist sentiment, first created federal jurisdiction in civil rights cases,6 and then in 1875 conferred general federal question jurisdiction on the lower federal courts.7 Since that time, the trend generally has been toward conferral of ever-increasing grants of jurisdiction to enforce the guarantees recognized and enacted by Congress.8
When a Case Arises Under
The 1875 statute and its present form both speak of civil suits arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States,
9 the language of the Constitution. Thus, many of the early cases relied heavily upon Chief Justice Marshall's construction of the constitutional language to interpret the statutory language.10 The result was probably to accept more jurisdiction than Congress had intended to convey.11 Later cases take a somewhat more restrictive course.12
Determination whether there is federal question jurisdiction is made on the basis of the plaintiff's pleadings and not upon the response or the facts as they may develop.13 Plaintiffs seeking access to federal courts on this ground must set out a federal claim which is well-pleaded
and the claim must be real and substantial and may not be without color of merit.14 Plaintiffs may not anticipate that defendants will raise a federal question in answer to the action.15 But what exactly must be pleaded to establish a federal question is a matter of considerable uncertainty in many cases. It is no longer the rule that, when federal law is an ingredient of the claim, there is a federal question.16
Many suits will present federal questions because a federal law creates the action.17 Perhaps Justice Cardozo presented the most understandable line of definition, while cautioning that [t]o define broadly and in the abstract ‘a case arising under the Constitution or laws of the United States’ has hazards [approaching futility].
18 How and when a case arises 'under the Constitution or laws of the United States' has been much considered in the books. Some tests are well established. To bring a case within the statute, a right or immunity created by the Constitution or laws of the United States must be an element, and an essential one, of the plaintiff's cause of action. . . . The right or immunity must be such that it will be supported if the Constitution or laws of the United States are given one construction or effect, and defeated if they receive another. . . . A genuine and present controversy, not merely a possible or conjectural one, must exist with reference thereto. . . .19
It was long evident, though the courts were not very specific about it, that the federal question jurisdictional statute is and always was narrower than the constitutional arising under
jurisdictional standard.20 Chief Justice Marshall in Osborn was interpreting the Article III language to its utmost extent, but the courts sometimes construed the statute equivalently, with doubtful results.21
Removal from State Court to Federal Court
A limited right to remove
certain cases from state courts to federal courts was granted to defendants in the Judiciary Act of 1789,22 and from then to 1872 Congress enacted several specific removal statutes, most of them prompted by instances of state resistance to the enforcement of federal laws through harassment of federal officers.23 The 1875 Act conferring general federal question jurisdiction on the federal courts provided for removal of such cases by either party, subject only to the jurisdictional amount limitation.24 The present statute provides for the removal by a defendant of any civil action which could have been brought originally in a federal district court, with no diversity of citizenship required in federal question
cases.25 A special civil rights removal statute permits removal of any civil or criminal action by a defendant who is denied or cannot enforce in the state court a right under any law providing for equal civil rights of persons or who is being proceeded against for any act under color of authority derived from any law providing for equal rights.26
The constitutionality of removal statutes was challenged and readily sustained. Justice Story analogized removal to a form of exercise of appellate jurisdiction,27 and a later Court saw it as an indirect mode of exercising original jurisdiction and upheld its constitutionality.28 In Tennessee v. Davis,29 which involved a state attempt to prosecute a federal internal revenue agent who had killed a man while seeking to seize an illicit distilling apparatus, the Court invoked the right of the national government to defend itself against state harassment and restraint. The power to provide for removal was discerned in the Necessary and Proper Clause authorization to Congress to pass laws to carry into execution the powers vested in any other department or officer, here the judiciary.30 The judicial power of the United States, said the Court, embraces alike civil and criminal cases arising under the Constitution and laws and the power asserted in civil cases may be asserted in criminal cases. A case arising under the Constitution and laws is not merely one where a party comes into court to demand something conferred upon him by the Constitution or by a law or treaty. A case consists of the right of one party as well as the other, and may truly be said to arise under the Constitution or a law or a treaty of the United States whenever its correct decision depends upon the construction of either. Cases arising under the laws of the United States are such as grow out of the legislation of Congress, whether they constitute the right or privilege, or claim or protection, or defense of the party, in whole or in part, by whom they are asserted. . . .
The constitutional right of Congress to authorize the removal before trial of civil cases arising under the laws of the United States has long since passed beyond doubt. It was exercised almost contemporaneously with the adoption of the Constitution, and the power has been in constant use ever since. The Judiciary Act of September 24, 1789, was passed by the first Congress, many members of which had assisted in framing the Constitution; and though some doubts were soon after suggested whether cases could be removed from state courts before trial, those doubts soon disappeared.
31 The Court has broadly construed the modern version of the removal statute at issue in this case so that it covers all cases where federal officers can raise a colorable defense arising out of their duty to enforce federal law.32 Other removal statutes, notably the civil rights removal statute, have not been so broadly interpreted.33
Corporations Chartered by Congress
In Osborn v. Bank of the United States,34 Chief Justice Marshall seized upon the authorization for the Bank to sue and be sued as a grant by Congress to the federal courts of jurisdiction in all cases to which the bank was a party.35 Consequently, upon enactment of the 1875 law, the door was open to other federally chartered corporations to seek relief in federal courts. This opportunity was made actual when the Court in the Pacific R.R. Removal Cases36 held that tort actions against railroads with federal charters could be removed to federal courts solely on the basis of federal incorporation. In a series of acts, Congress deprived national banks of the right to sue in federal court solely on the basis of federal incorporation in 1882,37 deprived railroads holding federal charters of this right in 1915,38 and finally in 1925 removed from federal jurisdiction all suits brought by federally chartered corporations on the sole basis of such incorporation, except where the United States holds at least half of the stock.39
Federal Questions Resulting from Special Jurisdictional Grants
In the Labor-Management Relations Act of 1947, Congress authorized federal courts to entertain suits for violation of collective bargaining agreements without respect to the amount in controversy or the citizenship of the parties.40 Although it is likely that Congress meant no more than that labor unions could be suable in law or equity, in distinction from the usual rule, the Court construed the grant of jurisdiction to be more than procedural and to empower federal courts to apply substantive federal law, divined and fashioned from the policy of national labor laws, in such suits.41 State courts are not disabled from hearing actions brought under the section,42 but they must apply federal law.43 Developments under this section illustrate the substantive importance of many jurisdictional grants and indicate how the workload of the federal courts may be increased by unexpected interpretations of such grants.44
Civil Rights Act Jurisdiction
Perhaps the most important of the special federal question jurisdictional statutes is that conferring jurisdiction on federal district courts to hear suits challenging the deprivation under color of state law or custom of any right, privilege, or immunity secured by the Constitution or by any act of Congress providing for equal rights.45 Because it contains no jurisdictional amount provision46 (while the general federal question statute at one time did)47 and because the Court has held inapplicable the judicially created requirement that a litigant exhaust his state remedies before bringing federal action,48 the statute has been heavily used, resulting in a formidable caseload, by plaintiffs attacking racial discrimination, malapportionment and suffrage restrictions, illegal and unconstitutional police practices, state restrictions on access to welfare and other public assistance, and a variety of other state and local governmental practices.49 Congress has encouraged use of the two statutes by providing for attorneys' fees under § 1983,50 and by enacting related and specialized complementary statutes.51 The Court in recent years has generally interpreted § 1983 and its jurisdictional statute broadly, but it has also sought to restrict the kinds of claims that may be brought in federal courts.52 Note that § 1983 and § 1343(3) need not always go together, as § 1983 actions may be brought in state courts.53
Pendent Jurisdiction
Once jurisdiction has been acquired through allegation of a federal question not plainly wanting in substance,54 a federal court may decide any issue necessary to the disposition of a case, notwithstanding that other non-federal questions of fact and law may be involved therein.55 Pendent jurisdiction,
as this form is commonly called, exists whenever the state and federal claims derive from a common nucleus of operative fact
and are such that a plaintiff would ordinarily be expected to try them all in one judicial proceeding.
56 Ordinarily, it is a rule of prudence that federal courts should not pass on federal constitutional claims if they may avoid it and should rest their conclusions upon principles of state law where possible.57 But the federal court has discretion whether to hear the pendent state claims in the proper case. Thus, the trial court should look to considerations of judicial economy, convenience and fairness to litigants
in exercising its discretion and should avoid needless decisions of state law. If the federal claim, though substantial enough to confer jurisdiction, was dismissed before trial, or if the state claim substantially predominated, the court would be justified in dismissing the state claim.58
A variant of pendent jurisdiction, sometimes called ancillary jurisdiction,
is the doctrine allowing federal courts to acquire jurisdiction entirely of a case presenting two federal issues, although it might properly not have had jurisdiction of one of the issues if it had been independently presented.59 Thus, in an action under a federal statute, a compulsory counterclaim not involving a federal question is properly before the court and should be decided.60 The concept has been applied to a claim otherwise cognizable only in admiralty when joined with a related claim on the law side of the federal court, and in this way to give an injured seaman a right to jury trial on all of his claims when ordinarily the claim cognizable only in admiralty would be tried without a jury.61 And a colorable constitutional claim has been held to support jurisdiction over a federal statutory claim arguably not within federal jurisdiction.62
Still another variant is the doctrine of pendent parties,
under which a federal court could take jurisdiction of a state claim against one party if it were related closely enough to a federal claim against another party, even though there was no independent jurisdictional base for the state claim.63 Although the Supreme Court at first tentatively found some merit in the idea,64 in Finley v. United States,65 by a 5-to-4 vote the Court firmly disapproved of the pendent party concept and cast considerable doubt on the other prongs of pendent jurisdiction as well. Pendent party jurisdiction, Justice Scalia wrote for the Court, was within the constitutional grant of judicial power, but to be operable it must be affirmatively granted by congressional enactment.66 Within the year, Congress supplied the affirmative grant, adopting not only pendent party jurisdiction but also codifying pendent jurisdiction and ancillary jurisdiction under the name of supplemental jurisdiction.
67
Thus, these interrelated doctrinal standards now seem well-grounded.